Great American classic novels

Word count is one of those things new writers worry about but deny worrying about because we’re not supposed to be worrying about it. According to Wikipedia’s entry on word count, the typical word count of a novel is at least 80, 000 words. I’ve heard through the publishing world grapevine than most agents and editors will generally take a query for a first novel more seriously if the word count is between 80, 000 and 100, 000.

Instead of sleeping, I compiled in an Excel sheet novels I read growing up. They’re mostly classics because those are the only ones where word count is easily obtained. More contemporary fiction would require more digging. I wouldn’t say I personally love every one of these books, but I would regard them as classics, as great novels in themselves, even if the particular author wasn’t that impressive of a writer.

Author — Book Title — Word Count
(in case it wasn’t obvious)

Alan Paton

Cry, the Beloved Country

83, 774

Alice Walker

The Color Purple

66, 556

Amy Tan

The Kitchen God’s Wife

159, 276

Joy Luck Club

91, 419

Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged

561, 996

The Fountainhead

311, 596

Betty Smith

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

145, 092

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

135, 420

Daniel Defoe

Moll Flanders

138, 087

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights

107, 945

Erich Remarque

All Quiet on the Western Front

61, 922

Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises

67, 707

Frank Norris

McTeague

112, 737

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crime and Punishment

211, 591

George Eliot

Middlemarch

316, 059

George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four

88, 942

Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird

99, 121

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

166, 622

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

114, 634

Honore de Balzac

Pere Goriot

87, 846

J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

73, 404

James Fenimore Cooper

Last of the Mohicans

145, 469

Jane Austen

Persuasion

87, 978

John Knowles

A Separate Peace

56, 787

John Steinback

The Grapes of Wrath

169, 481

East of Eden

225, 395

Joseph Heller

Catch-22

174, 269

Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five

49, 459

Welcome to the Monkey House

99, 560

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

587, 287

Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace

157, 665

Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huck Finn

109, 571

Life on the Mississippi

127, 776

Maxine Hong Kingston

Woman Warrior

70, 957

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

85, 199

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter

63, 604

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

78, 462

Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451

46, 118

The Martian Chronicles

64, 768

Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon

92, 400

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

63, 422

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

56, 695

William Golding

Lord of the Flies

59, 900

The Stats:

Average word count of the Great Novels is 136, 604 words. That’s like the literary institution’s recommended word count for first novels plus a long novella! But the arithmetic mean isn’t very helpful here because we’ve got some doozies on this list.

Median word count is 99, 341 words. That’s longer than Wikipedia’s estimation of the typical novel length, but just about right as a target word count for budding novel writers.

Shortest novel on the list is Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, one of my personal favorites, at 46, 118 words. Most of Hemingway’s novels make pretty slim books too.

Word count on the Bible, Old and New combined: 774, 776 words according to Source A and 788, 280 words in the King James according to Source B. But the Bible’s word count isn’t relevant here because first of all, it’s not by one author unless you want to go there with me and say it’s God and in that case, well, it’s God, so yeah.

Then again, considering the oeuvres of certain writers, like John Steinbeck, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, and even Amy Tan, they’ve already written way more than 700, 000-ish words.

Need A Life:

I can’t believe I just sat here and compiled that list. By the way, I came up with each book off the top of my head, either by author name or by title. I wrecked my brains from the excursion. I need to go do something like shop for shoes or eat ice cream now…. Ugh.

Word count on past PEN/Faulkner Award winners:

Chabon, Michael

The Amazing Adventures…

216, 020

Banks, Russell

Cloudsplitter

260, 742

Franzen, Jonathan

The Corrections

196, 774

Cooper, Susan

The Dark Is Rising

82, 143

Danticat, Edwidge

The Dew Breaker

60, 082

Phillips, Caryl

A Distant Shore

103, 090

Packer, ZZ

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

68, 410

Robinson, Marilynne

Gilead

84, 845

Cunningham, Michael

The Hours

54, 243

Kennedy, William

Ironweed

67, 606

McMurtry, Larry

Lonesome Dove

365, 712

Kingsolver, Barbara

The Poisonwood Bible

177, 679

Guterson, David

Snow Falling on Cedars

138, 098

Hegi, Ursula

Stones from the River

197, 517

Canales, Viola

The Tequila Worm

42, 715

Jin, Ha

Waiting

89, 297

Source: indefeasible.wordpress.com

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